Public Performance & Management Review

Relevant Research to Reinvigorate the Performance Movement: Critical Reflection and Hopeful Advancement - A Symposium and Special Issue Organized by Public Performance & Management Review (PPMR)

Once a defining feature of public sector reform agendas across the globe, performance measurement and "managing for results" reshaped the practice of governance and the trajectory of public management scholarship in the 1990s and 2000s. They offered compelling narratives of accountability, efficiency, and responsiveness—and galvanized vibrant transnational communities of researchers and reformers. But today, the pulse of the performance movement “appears” to be weakening in many places.

In many national and subnational contexts, performance management has either faded from reform priorities or become subsumed within broader paradigms such as evidence-based policy or data-informed governance. At the same time, the scholarly field—though increasingly sophisticated in methodological terms—often appears adrift from the core concerns of performance management practice. Research in this space risks becoming insular: technically precise yet practically marginal, theoretically inert, or normatively disengaged.

This symposium seeks to critically assess the state of performance research and its connection to practice, with the aim of reinvigorating the performance movement intellectually and practically. We invite scholars and practitioners to revisit foundational commitments, critique current trajectories, and articulate future pathways. What might a reinvigorated performance movement look like—and what kind of research, networks, and praxis might sustain it?

As practice and knowledge production are context-dependent, we encourage international participation and welcome critical analyses of specific countries or regions: what has happened to the performance movement in a particular context? What has been the role of public management scholars in shaping, legitimating, critiquing, or redesigning performance reforms? And what kinds of scholarship could reinvigorate the movement today? Comparative insights are appreciated.

Guiding Themes and Questions

We welcome conceptual and empirical submissions (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods) that speak to the following themes:

1. Reimagining Knowledge Production in Performance Management
   - What constitutes “useful” knowledge in a domain as practice-oriented asperformance management?
   - How can we critically evaluate the epistemological foundations andnormative assumptions of performance scholarship over the past 20–30 years?
   - In what ways have dominant research paradigms constrained—or enabled—the field’s evolution?
   - How can we more meaningfully address and bridge the research–practice divide?

2. Mapping the Rise and Fall of Performance Regimes
- How have performance management systems—and the research–practiceecosystems that support them—emerged, matured, and sometimes declined across countries or regions?
- What lessons can we learn from international comparisons of reform trajectories, governance cultures, and scholarly engagement?
- How has the institutional architecture of performance (e.g., audit bodies,think tanks, academic centers) evolved over time? What are the factors behind the evolution?

3. Charting the Future: What Are the “Big Questions”?
- Based on recent developments in practice, what major research questions remain unasked or under explored in the field?
- How can these questions connect theoretical contributions with practical relevance?
- What role should values (e.g., equity, trust, democracy) play in shaping the future agenda of performance scholarship?
- How are new technologies—especially generative AI and large language models—transforming the tools, practices, and epistemologies of performance management?

In addition to the above, we welcome any study—whether comparative, critical, empirical, or conceptual—that seeks to advance the intellectual and practical agenda of performance management.

Submissions from critical theory, postmodernist, interpretive, and constructivist traditions are encouraged. So too are contributions that challenge mainstream paradigms, center historically marginalized voices, or reflect the institutional diversity of global public administration.